Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Norsca

"Change! Rot! Blood! Defile!"

– Game battle chant for Norsca, shared with Warriors of Chaos

This is the tactica for the Total War: Warhammer version of Norsca.

Why Play Norsca?

• Because you don't need no sissy armor to serve the dark gods!
• You favor an aggressive play style with a lot of good large units and ways to fight large units.
• You just love viking bad guys.
• FUCKING MAMMOTHS!!!!!

Pros

• Monsters: You have a wide variety of beasties that can fulfill a variety of roles. From monstrous infantry, cavalry, fliers and Mammoths, you have one of the widest variety of monsters in the game.
• Anti Large: Not only do you have a ton of monsters, but you also have a lot of ways to kill them. A good chunk of your units have the Anti Large bonus, meaning you shouldn't have much in the way of issue with dealing with monsters or cavalry.
• Hard-Hitting Infantry: Your infantry tend to hit pretty hard for their price point, so you can get in a ton of damage on the front line very fast. If they get in on the right target you will be able to cause quite a bit of damage.
• Mobility: You have a ton of fast movers and speedy characters, meaning you can get around the battlefield pretty quick and wrap around flanks.

Cons

• DLC Faction: The pre-order bonus faction for the second Total War: Warhammer game, or a $10 tax to any/everyone who didn't pre-order it. Potentially a petty mark against it, considering that even the base game factions have DLC packs, but at least the base game factions are freely playable even aside that.
• Limited Range: Your missile doesn't go very far and you can only get a single unit of artillery, the melee is where you belong.
• Lack of Armor: These boys believe that nice pectorals and flowing hair make a perfect substitute for armor. They are wrong. You can get shredded by missiles and artillery, so watch out.
• No Heavy Cav: You have marauder horsemen and some monsters that can fill the role, but it doesn't quite replace the impact heavy cavalry can have on the field. This means you are missing out on some mobile hard-hitting power.
• Campaign is shit in WH2: You will get swarmed by every other faction on the map and you have a hard time holding any territory, not to mention trying to expand into the Old World or Naggarond. The Norscan campaign was designed around the climate mechanics in Warhammer 1, which 2 completely abandoned. Thankfully in Warhammer 3, Norsca is no longer bound to the coastline, and they got some touch ups to make them less painful to play.

Universal Traits

• Rage: The signature ability on most of your humans, which lets them step up from their Warriors of Chaos brethren. Overtime while in combat, the unit gains buffs to melee power and weapon strength help it in sustained fights. but when it goes through all of the 4 tiers, they lose it all, so they have to disengage and start again.
• Berserk: An ability like Rage but with additional melee defense to help them stay in the fight.

Lords

Legendary Lords

It's worth mentioning here that the Norscans have the ability to force any other Norscan faction leader into a confederation, provided you beat them in a battle. Considering how everyone starts clumped together in the northern edge of the map, You'll usually end up with both legendary lords under your control very early in the campaign.

• Wulfrik the Wanderer: The face of the race and a dedicated character duelist. He comes with three things that makes him incredible. First of all, the dude gets to ride a friggin war mammoth, which allows him to rampage across the lines of infantry and flatten all in front of him. Next is his ability Hunter of Champions, which allows him to severely debuff the speed and stats of enemy characters which makes it easier for him to beat the shit out of them. Finally is Seafang, or as it's known, "The Lore of Boats". This summons his ship which acts as a line spell and flattens anything it hits. This not only makes him great at character killing but also a great infantry blob killer.

In the campaign he is focused on enhancing Marauder and Mammoths units. Almost universally regarded as the better choice for starting a campaign because his focus is on your most basic units and your most powerful ones. Even if you prefer Throgg in combat, you can quickly force him into a confederation and reap the benefits of the World Walker tribe.

• Throgg: The Troll King and a dedicated battering ram. He does a lot of damage up and has regeneration, allowing him to brawl with most other lords without fear. However, he is a large target and as such is vulnerable to ranged attacks and all manner of anti-large weaponry. He also has 3 uses of a fairly accurate and long ranged Copious Vomit attack for some minor sniping ability. In the campaign any army he leads is completely immune to attrition, making him a good leader for a spearhead force to plunge into dangerous terrain.

His campaign gives bonuses to trolls, wolves, and non-mammoth monsters. Sounds good, but those are all specialized units meant to supplement a larger army of marauders. His greatest strengths are his physical combat prowess and his attrition immunity, neither of which has anything to do with his subfaction. Generally it's better to start with Wulfrik and confederate into Throgg to get the best of both worlds.

• Azrik the Maze Keeper: A Lord of Change only available in the campaign by devoting yourself to the Eagle. Azrik is immediately recruited at maximum level and draws from the lores of death and metal. He's a beast in melee and spell-casting, but his size makes his an obvious target for enemy ranged units.

Generic Lords

• Marauder Chieftan: Your only generic option, and he's essentially Wulfrik only without Seafang or Hunter of Champions. You know, the things that make him really good? On his own, he's a generic combat character for the majority of the campaign. What saves him from overall mediocrity is the fact that you can put him on a Mammoth and have him run rampage all across the battlefield. He's one of those lords who can be great but needs investment in campaign and additional funds in multiplayer in order to really make him worth it.

Heroes

• Shaman-Sorcerer: Your Human wizard with the lore of Metal, Fire, or Death. A cheap and generic wizard hero, for when you want magic on a budget. You can also mount him on a Chariot if you want some more speed and a bit of melee damage.
• Skin Wolf Werekin: Your anti-large melee hero. A fast-moving monster with high damage and regeneration allow him to function as a mainline brawler or a high speed assassin. In the campaign each werekin can enhance his armies stats, either increasing their melee attack or defense. Each Werekin can only get one of the bonuses, but multiple Werekin can stack the same effect for a powerful doomstack.
• Fimir Balefiend: Came back from being Squated, a foreshadowing of the fate of the Zoats. Has access to the lore of Fire and Shadow. Different from the Shaman due to innate tankiness, better melee attack and AP damage. On the other hand, the shaman can get a mount whilst the balefiend cannot.
• Kihar the Tormentor: A legendary hero you can unlock by devoting yourself to the serpent. On the battlefield he's a max-level Chaos Sorcerer (a chaos warriors variety with plate armour, not your normal norscan) on a two-headed mutant dragon who can wreck the enemy in melee or at a range with spells from the lores of fire and metal. On the campaign map his hero actions usually succeed 100% of the time barring enemy modifiers, letting him wreck garrisons and assassinate enemy heroes with impunity.

Units

Melee Units

• Marauders (Shields/Spears/Great Weapons): Your basic bread-and-butter infantry. Identical to their chaos counterparts, and rather squishy. Rage gives them an edge but not too much. They are useful in filling out a list with more expendable bodies. The shield variety are the cheapest and toughest, while the spear type get bonus damage against large targets. The Great Weapon marauders are a cheap if squishy source of anti-armour damage, but not much else. Overall they aren't terrible, but not particularly great either.
  • Icehorn Marauders (ROR): Better than their Marauder brothers with perfect vigor and immune to psychology. Like the normal variety, they can't win a battle on their own, but not useless by any means.
• Marauder Berserkers: Marauders with two melee weapons for double the fun. They deal high damage and are deceptively tough once they get into melee thanks to the Berserker ability, which makes them tougher as they build up rage.
  • Brutes of the Hound(ROR): Berserkers that are Unbreakable. better at finishing the job of breaking or destroying a unit before they are killed to the man. these can really tear apart almost all early game units.
• Marauder Champions: Your Elite infantry, meant to sprinkle them into a line to give your army some hardpoints so the monster has the time to flank. Also, a better line if the enemy shoots a lot of arrows compared to normal Marauders.
• Marauder Champions (Great Weapons): Elite AP infantry, better at their can opening jobs then Marauders. Expensive so only mix in a few into a line. get ap somewhere else, they aren't efficient at it. or cost effective.

Missile Infantry

• Marauder Hunters: Short-range axe-throwing units that deal high AP damage and cause the shieldbreak effect, lowering the enemies missile block chance. You don't have much of a ranged army to capitalize on the effect, but it helps the ranged units you do have do more damage. They're also just about as good as normal marauders in melee, which is good because they don't have the range nor the ammunition to stay out of combat.
• Marauder Hunters (Javelins): Higher range than the standard hunters, but with better damage against large targets. The increased range makes them a more well-rounded choice than the axe-throwing variety.

Cavalry and Chariots

• Marauder Horsemen: This may come as a shock to you, but marauder horsemen are marauders... on horses. They have throwing spears for some ranged combat and regular spears for flanking charges. They serve as a cheap distraction and skirmish chaser but lack the bodies for serious combat.
• Marauder Horsemen (Throwing Axes): Trading their spears for axes and shields, the throwing axe variety is tougher and more specialized than the standard horsemen.
• Marauder Horsemasters: All around better Horsemen, with the stats to actually do some decent work in melee. They aren't anywhere close to knights, but they can cause a lot of pain with a few cycle charges.
• Marauder Chariot: Your cheaper harassment chariot. Faster than the wolf variety, but with less damage and utility. Phase them out as soon as you can in the campaign, and seriously consider taking the wolf ones in multi-player.
• Marauder Ice Wolves Chariot: Your big chariot pulled by a couple of giant wolves. Higher damage than the horse kind, and the wolves slow down any enemy they hit in melee. These ones can also bring throwing axes for a bit of ranged bite while their gearing up for the next charge.

Monstrous Infantry

• Norscan Trolls: Low leadership and weak to missiles and fire, They bring the DPS while the marauders hold the enemies in place. need micro, but cost-effective in skillful hands.
• Norscan Ice Trolls: Slightly better than the above. Frostbite will allow you to slow enemies down and make them easier targets.
• Skin Wolves: Anti-Large, Regeneration, Frenzy...on top of that move pretty fast and absolutely demolish infantry as long as its not infantry that can in a reliant way fight monstrous infantry or has flaming attacks (or units that are both like the High Elf Dragonborn RoR).
• Skin Wolves (Armoured): Same as above, but with extra armor at the cost of being a tad slower. If micro'ed well and kept from getting pinned down are one of your best units by far. versatile and deadly. vulnerable to getting swarmed and anti-large.
  • Maws of Savagery (ROR): Same as the above Armoured Skin Wolves, but with better leadership, melee defense and attack, as well as having Vanguard.
• Fimir Warriors: Your tanky anti-armor unit with additional magical attacks. On top of that has Armour-Sundering attacks that give enemies -30 to their armor. Also are Siege Attackers, so you won't need towers and rams if you have them.
  • Mist Stalkers (ROR): Like the above, but on top of fear, they also cause Terror and have Vanguard.
• Fimir Warriors (Great Weapons): Same as your vanilla Warriors, but with Great Weapons and with Anti-Large. fine but consider skin wolves armored instead.

Warbeasts

• Norscan Warhounds: Standard hound-type units. Fast and disposable, throw them at enemy artillery and wizards to keep the enemy occupied while you move into position. Scaly skin helps protect them from missiles, but they won't survive against anything stronger than an artillery crew.
  • Beasts of Tashnar (ROR): Warhounds with frenzy, anti-large, and a crazy 50% missile resistance. Better than normal hounds, but not as good as ice wolves against most foes.
• Norscan Ice Wolves: Bigger badder ice wolves with Frostbite to slow down running targets and let your slower monsters smash them. Their reduced unit size also, ironically enough, massively improves their survivablility because individual models will soak up more damage per head (or paw) and increase the damage one model can put out before it goes down. Granted, they still will go down in prolonged fights, but it's still something to keep in mind. surprising good light cav equivalent. good vs anything without armor due to high weapon strength.

Monsters

• Feral Manticore: Exactly like the summoned kind from the lore of beasts, the manticore is a powerful aerial force that can smash enemy backlines to keep the rest of the army safe.
• Norscan Giant: Nope. Not worth it. There is basically no redeeming feature to giants, and the Norscan kind is no exception. Grab a mammoth if you want something big.
• Frost-Wyrm: A massive chaos dragon that can freeze enemies in place with melee attacks and a frost-breath weapon. Like all dragons it hits hard in combat but fall apart faster than you want if it gets caught out of position.
• Feral Mammoth: Let's talk about mammoths. Mammoths are amazing. Mammoths are the single best thing the Norscan army has, and one of the best monsters in the game. As if the huge health bar and great stats aren't enough, the mammoths unique attack animations allow it to sweep through huge swaths of infantry at once; combined with its terror and can route most infantry units in just a few hits. The feral variety is the cheapest but runs the risk of rampaging, which can be a nightmare for such a slow and valuable unit. high doomstack potential also.
• War Mammoth: Take everything great about the Mammoth, give it more armor, immunity to rampaging, and a howdah with guys throwing spears from it's back. If you can afford it, get one. If you can't afford it, save up and get one later. makes one of the best single entity doomstacks in the game.
  • Soulcrusher (ROR): A mammoth with the ability to temporarily gain 44% physical resistance, in case you need it to hold the line against the entire godsdamned Empire all at once. It also has strider, which is weird for such a massive unit, but useful.
• War Mammoth (Warshrine): A mammoth that provides leadership buffs to allies around it, at the cost of shooting ability and speed. Not bad in multiplayer, but in the campaign you should try to phase out your infantry once you get mammoths in favor of even more mammoths. A bit of a niche pick, but at the end of the day it's still a mammoth; never the worst choice.

Campaign Only

• The Ice-Forged Legion: A unique artillery unit you get from devoting yourself to the Hound. It's an upgraded chaos Hellcannon with homing projectiles that never miss. Seriously don't bother taking manual control of projectiles, its homing capabilities are that good.

Tactics

Multiplayer Strategies

In terms of the Non Daemon Chaos factions, you are pretty much the inbetween from Warriors of Chaos and Beastmen. For the most part, you're a squishy rush faction but you do have some holding power. The big strength of your race, however, is the fact that not only do you have a ton of monsters at your command, you are also good at killing them. You have a ton of anti large and good mobile damage monsters to quickly overwhelm your enemy. You still got to be careful though, as while you aren't Beastmen squishy, armor values and defensive stats are still pretty low and while you have some range, it won't be enough to out shoot dedicated ranged factions. Here's how you can win glory from the weak southeners:

• Beastmen: This used to be a matchup heavily in your favour due to the Beastmen's atrociously poor anti-large capabilities. But they've been given more than enough tools in their kit to remove that weakness. Ghorgons will quite literally eat your mammoths alive if you don't eliminate them in short order and minotaurs are very capable of throwing hands with Skinwolves and Trolls. Tuskgor chariots are a nasty pain in your ass though since while the Norscans are good at killing large units they struggle with actually stopping a charge they can't outright prevent with Skinwolves.

• Bretonnia: You are basically built to kill Bretonnia. Melee infantry with a strong offensive focus, big monsters, plenty of anti-large, and lots of fast movers who can harass the back lines. All of it adds up to stuff Bretonnia struggles with. Pull down their knights with Skinwolves, Fimir, and Marauder Hunters. Send hounds and horsemen after their archers. Berserkers can probably handle their peasants so long as they don't take too much fire.

• Chaos Warriors: You're almost certainly not going to win the front line engagement unless they also bring Marauders, so this tends to devolve into a monster mash of Shaggoths fighting Fimir.

• Dark Elves: A match-up with quite simple rules. If you can break into their main crossbow line you can win. If you can't you will lose. The Dark Elves can match you blow for blow at the Monster Game and Kharybdi see your mammoths and fimir as lunch while the Dark Elves have enough flaming damage to make trolls a risky play at best. Skinwolves are exceedingly vulnerable to massed missile fire and the Dark Elves' ability to take away control over your units with Witch Elves will frustrate any effort to pull out of bad match-ups. The front line match up is weird as the Dark Elves swing between fairly meh basic infantry to hyper-elite killing machines with very little in between. That being said, murderous prowess means that your infantry's preferred playstyle can backfire hard if you don't plan ahead. Your own ranged infantry will almost certainly be annihilated in short order, so you have to make them count before they're all dead.

• Dwarfs: Mammoths, chariots, and hounds are the name of the game. Bring a character on a mammoth and one other and they will tear the dwarf infantry a new asshole. Tie up their guns with hounds and run everything else over with chariots. Consider a Lore of Metal caster to help negate their armor.

• Empire: You're actually very well positioned to fight The Empire. Fimir and Skinwolves can put the hurt on their knights, Marauders with even a little support can crush their infantry, and your plentiful wolves and hounds can swarm their gun line.

• Grand Cathay: Oof. Cathay has great anti-large position holding infantry to stop you monsters cold and enough ranged firepower to reduce your poorly armoured units to paste. Cathay even has spells to drastically increase the mass of their infantry to stop chariots and mammoths from going their thing and you have essentially no worthwhile counters to Sky Junks unless you were winning the fight anyway. You can more or less forget about your infantry as they are going to be shredded to pieces long before they ever reach the Cathayans and with the exception of Peasants Cathayan infantry are nearly dwarf tier tough, and your mammoths are juicy targets for crossbowmen and grand cannons. Chariots and monstrous infantry will be your main tool though keep in mind that Celestial Guard and Jade Warrior Halberdiers will dumpster any such large units in short order.

• Greenskins: A rather interesting match up as the way you like to play is something that the Orcs can out-do you at. If you try to take advantage of rage you are going to get krumped in short order by the Waaagh once your units' rage boils over and forces you to start from scratch while the Orcs just keep hitting harder and harder. Your primary saving grace is that the Greenskins struggle at dealing with monsters for all their monster mash shenanigans and your frostbite can shut down their Goblin skirmishers. However if you let the Greenskins decide the terms or tempo of the engagement you will lose and lose hard.

• High Elves: Go cheap on the front line, it's not what's going to win you this battle. High Elves are good on defense and will outlast you before you get the most out of your Rage effect. A mammoth or two will tear through all Asur infantry except maybe Phoenix Guard, but the real threat to you is their archers. Bring warhounds, manticores, Marauder Horsemen, anything that can harass their back line. Probably leave Ice Wolves at home though, as they count as large units so Lothern Sea Guard will get a melee bonus against them.

• Kislev: Kislev exists to drink your tears. War Bear Riders shit on basically your entire roster of monsters that don't get focus-fired into oblivion, your infantry will be torn to bloody pieces before ever reaching the Kislevites who will then bonk the tattered remnants into submission assuming they even get that close with all the means of slowing you down, their Lores are staggeringly painful for a poorly armoured army like yours, and their horse cavalry is more than fast enough to make your skirmishers cav eat shit. Kislev also basically has no backline at all as anything that shoots can also smash. Frost Wyrms might be of use here as Kislev has no air game at all, but given that nearly every infantry man in Kislev's roster can shoot them that's small comfort. By Our Blood also means that Kislevites just don't run away.

• Khorne: Do not even think about trying to contest Khorne in the infantry fight. Your very best infantry struggle against the cheapest they can bring to the field and your rage mechanic encourages a playstyle that directly feeds into Khorne's ramp-up effects from killing loads of dudes. What Khorne hates a bit more than everything else though are enemies who refuse to get into melee with him and large numbers of monsters or low model count units that don't let him collect skulls. Make sure to focus fire Bloodthirsters or Khornate Minotaurs though as they can tear your monsters to pieces. Leave the Frost Wyrms at home too, Bloodthirsters will absolutely shit on them. Also keep in mind that Skarbrand is one of the few Legendary Lords that neither Wulfrik nor Throgg stands any real chance against. Do not, under any circumstances, try to duel Skarbrand in anything resembling a fair fight. If you make this mistake, his ability to force everything around him to rampage will prevent you from correcting your error before he's killed Wulfrik stone dead. Avoid Skarbrand and shoot him to pieces as best you can and for the love of the Dark Gods do not let him ramp up kills.

• Lizardmen: You are both melee oriented armies that love prehistoric monsters but are surprisingly capable at range. The primary difference though is that the Lizardmen are generally better at it than you. Basic Saurus warriors will see wave upon wave of marauders bounce off them and the Lizardmen are not lacking for ways to simply shoot your mammoths to death if they don't feel like fighting you monster to monster. Lizardman magic also blows anything you can field off the table and they have access to plenty of healing to just plain outlast you. There is no clean and easy way to win this match-up; only differing forms of slogs.

• Norsca:

• Nurgle: Your monsters and cavalry dream of match-ups like this while your infantry will probably fall to their knees weeping in sorrow. Nurgle has no anti-large whatsoever and has very limited ranged attack options as well as being by far the slowest army in the entire game. Nurgle also relies quite a lot on large models that are poorly armoured that you'll be able to chunk through in short order. However, your infantry want to be in prolonged fights and then pull away once their rage caps out and getting into prolonged fights with Grandpa Nurgle is the worst thing you can do as your infantry will eat increasingly heavy debuffs. Fire damage is an absolute must against Nurgle due to the abundance of regeneration and healing that the Sevenfold Lord brings to the table. Overall an easy matchup due to how one-trick Nurgle is, but can be frustrating.

• Ogre Kingdoms: You can bring down all of their roster with your anti-large except gnoblars. All there is to watch for are their ranged units. They're powerful, and are either an ogre or a big monster that makes shutting them down a pain.

• Skaven: You are very good at dealing with Skaven. They are so reliant on their ranged units that your numerous flanking options can give them an enormous headache, and their low leadership means that once those ranged units start to run they are probably not coming back. Your plentiful anti-large options will mince Moulder monsters, but watch out for Eshin kite builds.

• Slaanesh: The good news is that Slaanesh melts in the face of any raged fire whatsoever and their armour-piercing is wasted on your hordes of half-naked Swedes and outside of Soul Grinders and Magic; has no way to attack you from a distance. The bad news is that you don't have enough long-ranged firepower to stop them from closing with you and you will disintegrate in the face of a Slaaneshi charge. Slaanesh however, hates prolonged battles of attrition and frostbite is there to help you stop them from flouncing out of battles they've gotten themselves into. Like most of the mono-god chaos armies they also struggle with holding against being charged themselves due to a lack of charge-defence having infantry.

• Tomb Kings: You like mammoths right? Too bad because Necrosphinxes and Bone Giants love nothing more than Mammoth heavy Norsca lists. The Tomb Kings are an extremely versatile enemy that has plenty of ways to force you to come over to them and enough cheap line holders to keep you away from their backline while having plenty of hard-hitting finishing move units. They will also outright outlast you and have the magic to ruin your day. Frost-Wyrms though; can fly largely uncontested as the Tomb kings barely have any noteworthy aerial presence and tend to focus their ranged fire on the main body of your units. Of course if the Skeletons really want to get rid of the dragon they will; but it's more than able to find a use distracting them so that your army isn't reduced to paste by Ushabt, Necroliths, and Caskets. Overall a very tricky match up that is more the Tomb Kings' game to lose than it is yours to win.

• Tzeentch: If you can catch Tzeentch's core of ranged infantry and flamers, you'll rip them apart. The problem is getting that close in the first place because Tzeentch's mid-range firepower is utterly unrivalled. Frostbite is an absolute necessity to stop cycling shenanigans unless you like watching the damage you deal be undone by a few seconds of recovery for their shields. You also need to be careful with the skies because Tzeentch has such a wide array of flying units, and the Lore of Tzeentch is one of the nastiest offensive lores in the entire game. The good news though is that Tzeentch's main recourse to dealing with monsters is "hope they can be shot before they collide with the horrors". Don't bother with trolls though, basically every ranged attack Tzeentch lists will throw at you is flaming.

• Vampire Coast: These guys hate you. The Vampirates can blast anything to pieces from a distance but up close their are a sodden mass of loose meat. Most of your units can tear them apart in melee and you have lots of ways to get into their back line. Fimir and Skinwolves can really put a hurt on their own monsters.

• Vampire Counts: Grab Throgg, Mammoths, and Fimir, then supplement them with some spear or javelin support. Vampire Counts have poor anti-large which means going full monster mash is a good choice against them. Trolls can work, but beware of their low leadership against the Vampires, whose entire roster causes Fear.

• Wood Elves:

Campaign Strategies

TWW1

TWW2: A notoriously terrible campaign, although with mods it can be very fun. In vanilla, you start out by unifying Norsca (i.e. wandering around until you find the faction leader of the peepee poopoo tribe and sneak attack him, confederate his faction, then repeat for every tribe until you have Norsca conquered), and then set out on raiding and pillaging the old world. You can only settle certain port settlements and racial capitals like Drakenhof, Altdorf, Naggarond etc.* and you sack/raze the other settlement for sweet sweet cash or to increase your allegiance meter to the dark gods, which gives bonuses as it's filled up. The problem with this type of settlement system is the ruin-dwelling AI. They'll constantly colonize the ruins you leave behind. While this can be beneficial providing you with easy sack/raze opportunities against easily-reachable foes, it can be frustrating in that it's difficult to make any real progress inland.

Your economy is the equivalent of modern day Siberia, i.e. shit. In the beginning of the game, you're going to be struggling to field a halfway decent full stack even with all of Norsca conquered. Luckily, once you get to sacking cities, Norsca has a ton of global bonuses to raiding/sacking income so you'll get the train rolling that way and basically operate at a deficit for most of the game. BE CAREFUL who you declare war on. With many factions war is unavoidable, but they can steamroll through your territory since you don't have walls.

Once you fully fill up your allegiance meter, and defeat some special armies that come in to invade you (plus a special quest battle!) you'll get your Level 3 bonus (I recommend the Serpent for that upkeep reduction, plus Kihar is a useful hero but you can go with whichever) and begin the chaos invasion. You have the choice to either join with Archaon or defy him. For power players, defying him is defintiely the way to go since you get a fuckhuge SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT UPKEEP REDUCTION for all your units. Joining with him is fun and thematic, but it automatically turns the campaign into a 'This is Total War' campaign since every non-chaos aligned faction (including Skaven) is scripted to declare war on you. It's not like the chaos invasion is that helpful when you're playing as Norsca either, it's just 7 armies with more spawning sometimes. Still, can be a fun way to add a huge challenge to your campaign.

• Author's note: This system has been abolished in Immortal Empires. I'm in the minority in that I thought the old system was super cool and thematic, but for most it's a sigh of relief.

Total War: Warhammer Tactics Articles
General Tactics	Tactics Magic Banner Immortal Empires
Total War: Warhammer	The Empire Dwarfs Greenskins Vampire Counts Bretonnia Warriors of Chaos Beastmen Wood Elves Norsca
Total War: Warhammer 2	High Elves Dark Elves Lizardmen Skaven Tomb Kings Vampire Coast
Total War: Warhammer 3	Kislev Khorne Tzeentch Nurgle Slaanesh Grand Cathay Ogre Kingdoms Daemons of Chaos Chaos Dwarfs